In case you haven't noticed, there's a new, but familiar, face shepherding tourists around Lunenburg this summer.

 Shelah Allen, who over many years has gained a reputation for her tireless work with the Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival and other entertainment endeavours along the South Shore, is now manager and tour guide for the Lunenburg Town Walking Tours.

 Born and raised in the picturesque UNESCO World Heritage Site, Ms Allen brings not only a great deal of experience to the enterprise, which was founded by her new business partner Eric Croft over a quarter century ago, but also a wealth of knowledge concerning things unique to the town.

 This summer, with Mr. Croft serving as an on-board director for Tauck bus tours in Atlantic Canada, Ms Allen agreed to take over the reins of the popular Lunenburg operation.

 "They're inbound bus tours," she explains. "Greylines and Tauck both have products that come to town, either out of Halifax or on regional tours, so I meet their buses and give the walking tour to their guests."

 While some bus lines engage their own guides when they visit Lunenburg, Ms Allen says that as a native of the town she is able to provide a more "authentic, accurate product" than might be available from those individuals.

 "I'm seventh-generation Tanner on my mother's side, and I've had an interest in genealogy and in stories," she says. "I'm not so much a history buff ... but I do love stories and there's a big difference. I think I've learned quickly that people don't want a lot of facts and figures. I try to limit that to what you need to know to understand what you're hearing about. I call it history lite."

 Along with handling inbound bus tours, she has also agreed to pick up walking tours for other, non-bused tourists who are staying in town.

 She is currently working on developing a schedule that will provide the best times of day to book those tours.

 "So far, the one that has been getting the biggest response is the evening tour," she says. "I call it The Lantern Tales and I do a little bit of everything."

 The tour begins at dusk, which lately has been around 8:30 p.m., on the town waterfront with what Ms Allen calls "a little history primer.

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 "Most people don't stay in town a couple of days and they're not going to do two walking tours," she explains. "[It's] on who we are and how we got here. I frame that up for them so they have a little bit of an understanding when we get into the other stuff, how we are a superstitious people and where that comes from. And there are ghost stories up and down the streets."

 The evening tour heads from its waterfront base on Bluenose Drive up King Street past several of the town's historic churches to Lunenburg Academy and then on into Hillcrest Cemetery.

 "That gives good fodder for stories," she says, adding that the tours are not only of interest to tourists but to locals as well. "Anybody that wants to come can come along. It's a great thing to do with your visiting family and friends."

posted on 07/19/11